Visual doom indicator like some other FF games

[Alhanelem]

It wasn't until long after the first time I encountered doom that I realized that you don't see other people's doom countdown messages. You can call me whatever names you want for failing to notice this the very first time I ever ran into doom (a long time ago), but it made me realize that in many other games with doom effects, including the FF Tactics games and the Crystal Chronicles games, doom countdowns are displayed on the affected characters, which count down when their turn comes up (tactics) or in real time, even in multiplayer (FFCC).

Since we already have the ability to put damage numbers over character's heads, wouldn't it be nice if doom counters were visible in FFXI? I realized after that initial discovery that the reason for the lack of log messages for other players is simply because of the massive spam that would ensue. But an onscreen display would work just fine and wouldn't have that problem. I'm willing to bet Camate or another staff member will come in and say "This is too hard to implement" but figured I'd post it anyway. It would be a great help if you're attempting to remove doom from someone else.

[Sparthos]

Cmon, you know this is gonna get "PS2 limitations" already.

[Alhanelem]

Cmon, you know this is gonna get "PS2 limitations" already.
Not really, becaouse you could simply recycle the existing system that puts numbers over people's head. All that needs to change for the doom indicator is to have the number be a different color.

I'm going to pass on probability of change pessimism for once and fantasize about this.

[Rearden]

So pessimism for everyone's ideas but your own, got it.

[Alhanelem]

So pessimism for everyone's ideas but your own, got it.
Nope, you don't got it. But keep trying.

I'm not pessimistic about everyone's ideas. I've endorsed many suggestions on this forum, you're just too busy picking me apart when I don't to notice.

[MDenham]

I'd vote for having the digits for this as the highest-priority icon (in place of linkshell/bazaar/etc.), since I'm pretty sure there's room for 10 more icons of this sort even on the PS2.

[Alhanelem]

That's not a bad idea, though I've noticed that the name icon is rather slow to change from one icon to another (e.g. equip and unequip a linkshell, or empty and add something to the bazaar to see) so it might be too slow of a system for this.

[MDenham]

That's not a bad idea, though I've noticed that the name icon is rather slow to change from one icon to another (e.g. equip and unequip a linkshell, or empty and add something to the bazaar to see) so it might be too slow of a system for this.Hell, even if it just displays a skeleton to indicate "THIS PERSON IS DOOMED, DO SOMETHING" it's fast enough for that, I think.

Though I can't say I've noticed it being terribly slow about updating that icon. Maybe a half-second lag at worst. I suspect it's based off the round-trip time between your client and the servers.

[Urthdigger]

You know, I've wanted for the longest time for us to get visual indicators of status ailments like we did in past FF games. Zzzs overhead for sleep, tinted green for poison, tinted grey for stone. That whole chestnut.

[Leonlionheart]

At the very least make the icon for doom have a count down

some of us like to see what damage we are doing with normal hits, and often those come so fast that they can block out the doom countdown.

So, instead of the curse icon, have 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Or 20~1.

Can use the same thing for the peiste's petrify count down, and it's not hard in the slightest to make/designate icons, specially as simple as numbers...

[Tsukino_Kaji]

I'd vote for having the digits for this as the highest-priority icon (in place of linkshell/bazaar/etc.), since I'm pretty sure there's room for 10 more icons of this sort even on the PS2.Except we already learned from utsusemi that SE is incapable of making icons over 4.

[Hashmalum]

Making the status icon have a counter was done in kind of kludgy way--the different Utsusemi counts were actually changed into different statuses. Each status has ONE and ONLY ONE status icon! And what's worse is that like many other things--zone IDs, spell IDs, etc.--the game is running out of unassigned resources. Like there are only 256 zone IDs with almost all of them used already, there are only 512 status IDs and there are only a few dozen left. Making a status icon doom counter would eat up 9 more status IDs. Making a gradual petrification counter would consume 19! That's a bad thing, especially when you consider that every single job ability that doesn't take effect immediately has its own status. Adding status icon counters means fewer new job abilities. It won't happen.

[Atomic_Skull]

When doomed replace the Bazaar/linkpearl icon with a numbered skull icon that counts down.

[Alhanelem]

there are only 512 status IDs and there are only a few dozen left.Wasn't it 256 at one time or something?

[Hashmalum]

Wasn't it 256 at one time or something?I have no idea, but I know it's 512 now. The number of job IDs were bumped up when the ToAU jobs were added, as prior to that there were 16 job IDs and one of them was used for "no job". I believe that there were previously only half as many spell IDs too, and possibly job ability IDs--not sure on those. But given that we don't get auto-translate for even the most necessary terms anymore, I'm guessing we are approaching the final few pitiful bytes long ago earmarked "for future use" so I wouldn't count on an expansion as long as the PS2 is still supported.

[Leonlionheart]

DAMN IT PS2

y u hate this game

[Alhanelem]

I just strongly recall them having to do something to up the number of status icons they can have some long time ago, and this broke a lot of dat mods that changed status icons. I think it was around the time ToAU came out.

Anyway, I suggested using the system that lets them pop numbers and the word 'miss!' on the character for the doom counter because I figured something like using status icons would be clunky and problematic.

[Krashport]

Doom countdown over head, I can see this being helpful, Also I always wonder why the HELL+1.. Do I have to walk around w/ names on but can't just turn my name off..

I mean why do I have to see my name all the time over my head, I promise I will never forget my <Username>; If I can have the option to just turn mine off. ^^;

All names: on/off
Just your name: on/off

[Soranika]

I'll take spam in my chat log of the doom count down than a visual indicator. With so many activities encouraging mass participation over a strategic use one full party of six, there's a lot of lag to be had. On several occasions I find myself turning my camera away from the action just so I can target some one. Filtering visual animations don't do a whole lot to help.

Communication helps too.

[Alhanelem]

Thing is, if a monster has AoE doom, you will see:
Player 1's doom counter is now down to 10.
Player 2's doom counter is now down to 10.
Player 3's doom counter is now down to 10.
Player 4's doom counter is now down to 10.
Player 5's doom counter is now down to 10.
Player 6's doom counter is now down to 10.
Player 7's doom counter is now down to 10.
Player 1's doom counter is now down to 9.
Player 2's doom counter is now down to 9.
Player 3's doom counter is now down to 9.
Player 4's doom counter is now down to 9.
Player 5's doom counter is now down to 9.
Player 6's doom counter is now down to 9.
Player 7's doom counter is now down to 9.
Player 1's doom counter is now down to 8.
Player 2's doom counter is now down to 8.
Player 3's doom counter is now down to 8.
Player 4's doom counter is now down to 8.
Player 5's doom counter is now down to 8.
Player 6's doom counter is now down to 8.
Player 7's doom counter is now down to 8.
....

Do you really want that?

I'm pretty sure that's the reason the game only tells you your own doom counter.

[Soranika]

Not really, hence communication.

[Alhanelem]

You can't communicate that you have 4 seconds left on your doom counter, because by the time you say that, you're dead.

If your counter was simply displayed to everyone, people could react a lot faster.

[Soranika]

Chat filtering and a person just typing doom. Honestly doesn't matter how much time you have, just say when it's on and when it's off the ones trying to cure it aren't constantly spamming cursna without noticing they've been cured of it already.

Most monsters that use doom have it in the chat log that they have been indeed doomed. It only but a second to say doom. Also knowing what you're fighting helps a great deal. There's no excuse for fighting something like Chloris or a taurus like monster and no being aware of what abilities cast doom. If you're off at flux 10 in walk of echoes, the timer won't matter at all.

Still, I see the benefit in it for others, just personally I wouldn't use from reasons stated above. When I'm on WHM and the size of the TV I play on, my eyes are generally focused only on the chat log and HP bars only time I'm looking at the action or anyone specific is when I'm I'm trying to make sure I'm in range to cure and out of range of the aoe abilities.

[Tamoa]

I have to say I agree a lot with what Soranika is saying. I too tend to mainly keep an eye on chat log and hp bars when I'm on whm and I'm uncertain if an icon showing others that a player is doomed would be of much help, at least not for me. Then again, I'm certainly not against the idea. Although I think I would prefer something like a skull or w/e, and not a visible counter above everybody's heads.

[Alhanelem]

A visual display helps because showing it in the chat log is impractical.

Consider someone only has like 3 seconds left. If they said "doom 3 sec" you wouldn't be able to do attempt a cursna in time. If you saw the counter, you might be able to.

In a busy fight it's easy to miss the "soandso is doomed."

There is literally no downside to having this other than whatever. It could be turned on/off the same way as floating damage text can be turned on/off (Perhaps even with the same option to save dev time). The only downside is whatever amount of development time would be required.

The point is, a visual indicator is a handy convenience that fits in with improving UI useability, and while not an absolute necessity, would be very helpful to some people in some circumstances. Virtually every other MMO known to man has visual indicators of status effects (or at least a visual notice such as the word "Paralyze" popping up) and what I'm suggesting is already present in other Final Fantasy games.

[noodles355]

But you wouldn't say "3 sec left doom" with 3 sec left, you would just say "doom" as soon as you're hit by it, so that point is pretty irrelevant.

You're just looking at using more game resources to make up for your own inadequacies. How hard is it to say "doomed" as soon as you are? Even if you didn't say doom and are at 3 seconds left on counter, a good mage should have noticed by now that you've been spamming holy waters for the past 7 seconds. If they're not noticing things like that they're probably not going to notice a doom icon either.

I'm sorry Alhanalem, but you frequently use the argument of "a waste of developer time resources for something that is a very tiny issue" when arguing against other ideas. I find it funny now that you're on the other side and throwing the "there is nothing negative about this argument", a statement which you always counter with "waste of dev resources/time" in almost every case.

Not being able to deal with doom and communicate properly falls on your own weakness as a player.

[Prothscar]

This is a good idea in practice, however it's a redundancy. As has already been mentioned, you can already tell your mages when you're doomed. An actual visual reminder of that fact won't help the braindead WHM cursna you any more than you screaming "I'M DOOMED!!1!1!!11"

If you're waiting until 3 or 4 seconds are left on your doom timer to notify someone, who's really to blame?

[Felren]

If you even get a response here it'l probably be something like one of these:

After checking with the development team on the possibility of making adjustments so that you can ------------ they replied that due to the fact that this is tied to a very early system in the game, it would be quite difficult to implement

I checked in with the dev. team regarding adding the ----------- feature. They said that the idea is really interesting, but that they're sorry to report that due to the high cost associated with creating a system like that, it's just not feasible to implement.


---------------------------------------------------------------

LONG LIVE THE SPAGHETTI CODE MONSTER CREATED 10 YEARS AGO

[Alhanelem]

You're just looking at using more game resources to make up for your own inadequacies.Sorry, no. I'ts not about my inadaquacy. But thanks for taking a personal stab at me.

This is about an improvement to UI usability, about establishing consistency with other Final Fantasy titles, and applying a bit of convenience and polish- making something easier on people. You can not use it all you want, while people who would find it handy can use it. Again: There's no reason not to do this other than your subjective opinion about how worth the developer's time it is. Which, I don't disagree, their time is precious, but this is just one small piece out of a whole lot of things they can do to improve the UI. Just like many other things in the game, such as TP among other things, All I'm asking for is a piece of information normally only available to an individual to be available to everyone in the party without the individual having to say so.

Sometimes I think people are railing against a suggestion just because I made it.
Pretend the PS2 doesn't exist and pretend the development team has an unlimited amount of time on their hands for just a moment. Now, consider the suggestion again. How, I ask, does having an optional visual display of this and perhaps other status effects harm you personally in any way?


As has already been mentioned, you can already tell your mages when you're doomed. It's not something you should have to tell anyone. It's something the game should tell everyone involved. Again, I'm asking to make the Countdown visible- not just the status effect. This way you can know whether you should help try to remove it or if it's going to be futile (e.g. <3 seconds left and not enough time to cast it).


If you're waiting until 3 or 4 seconds are left on your doom timer to notify someone, who's really to blame?
Not being able to deal with doom and communicate properly falls on your own weakness as a player.

With a system like this in place, there's no excuse for this to happen in the first place- It is then up to the healers to attempt to cursna (while the affected player is also hopefully using holy waters). If you're against this because it creates an oppertunity for players to be "weak", well, all I can say is that's just silly. Please also stop talking about this like I'm suggesting it because I died to doom one time and didn't tell anyone and thus am a weak player. That's not the case and the main reason behind this suggestion is to address a minor annoyancee in such a way that doesn't flood the chat log in the event of an AoE doom.

I know I'm often critical of simple suggestions, so I rather expected this kind of response. And yes, I know the dev team response would most likely be "this is too hard we can't do it." It's just an idea, I'm throwing it out there, no harm can come by doing so. If the devs don't have time for it, that's fine. That's why it's a suggestion, not a demand.

So all you people arguing against this- Do you want this feature removed from all of the games that have it? Do you like it when game difficulty is created by battling the interface and through player communication rather than a genuine challenge?

[Ryce]

People are mean. It was just a suggestion.

Really, this is only 1 small element of an overall weakness of the game - Not nearly enough useful information is displayed "on screen". With such a pretty game, why do most classes spend most of their time staring at a chat log? Personally, I hate playing healer/support jobs because I have to stare at the HP bars to see if there are any noticeable status ailments or people needing cures. It would be much nicer to see the character models of the players in my party visually effected.

To the players who respond "I spend most of my time looking at the chat log anyway", please realize the reason you do this is because you have to do this. Are you saying you wouldn't rather look at your character, the battle animations, and the environmental graphics?

It's an old game and I'd never expect this to be changed now, even incrementally with things like a visual doom counter.

[Alhanelem]

Really, this is only 1 small element of an overall weakness of the game - Not nearly enough useful information is displayed "on screen"That basically sums it up... I'm glad someone is able to express it more eloquently than I can. :P

[Soranika]

People are mean. It was just a suggestion.

Really, this is only 1 small element of an overall weakness of the game - Not nearly enough useful information is displayed "on screen". With such a pretty game, why do most classes spend most of their time staring at a chat log? Personally, I hate playing healer/support jobs because I have to stare at the HP bars to see if there are any noticeable status ailments or people needing cures. It would be much nicer to see the character models of the players in my party visually effected.

To the players who respond "I spend most of my time looking at the chat log anyway", please realize the reason you do this is because you have to do this. Are you saying you wouldn't rather look at your character, the battle animations, and the environmental graphics?

It's an old game and I'd never expect this to be changed now, even incrementally with things like a visual doom counter.
Yes. Why would I want to be so self centered as a healer by looking at my own character if it isn't directly related to saying out of range of aoe attacks but still in range of curing? In both small parties and large alliances, there is not actual benefit for a WHM or any healer to be paying attention to the battle animation, especially when things start to lag. It's not like driving or what melee have to do where they're looking at the on screen actions and text log. Most of the time they don't have time to look at even their own HP if they feel uncomfortable with failing healing support. You may hate it, but the rest of us who do it more than others understood that when we got into that role. Our focus IS the watching everyone's HP and the chat log. No amount of visual graphics is going to help you anyway if you're staying outside of 20' yalm range of most aoe doom spells anyway. And I, personally, get fairly dizzy and admittedly confused when I'm looking at what's going on the battle field while trying to keep up with curing ailments and healing... so I speak for myself on that one. I don't like loosing my focus.

It's a good ideal, but it is, as said, redundant. As I said before, it doesn't matter how much time you have on doom. A good healer will keep spamming cursna until they see that it's been cured of the affliction, even more so if they see some one still spamming holy waters as any person fighting a creature that can doom should have anyway, just like mages should carry echo drops. If you can't simply type "doom" then you're screwed from the beginning. And if you're not directly engaging a monster that uses doom attacks, you should be staying out of range or else you deserve to die.

That's not being mean, that's speaking truth. You have to know how to cover your own butt, limitations or not. There's no excuse for not communicating your afflictions, even if it's just one word of the affliction or the cure. Doom, viruna, silence, silena, sleep, zzz, erase, slow, ect. Even adding plz to the end of asking for buffs if you want to be nice about it.

[Alhanelem]

Yes.
Then why aren't you playing one of the many MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) out there instead? No graphics, just pure text for you to stare at. The rest of us would like to focus on the view of the battle itself. Part of the reason for the visual damage/miss is to allow people to still see what's happening without having to only stare at the log window.


There's no excuse for not communicating your afflictions, even if it's just one word of the affliction or the cure. Doom, viruna, silence, silena, sleep, zzz, erase, slow, ect. People already do this. But doom (and gradual petrify) are the only effects that have a set time limit. I see no reason why this time limit shouldn't be known to other players without you having to say yourself "10 9 8 7 6..." Most people already report status effects. But just saying 'doom' isn't enough for doom. Why are you so against a simple convenience? That's all it is, it doesn't kill skill. As much as we love FFXI, it has one of the worst and least informative UIs in the history of gaming. Conveying information that should be on the UI is a skill that shouldn't be required of players. As I said in another thread, "skill" should be in devising sound tactics, and then effectively and properly executing those tactics. Not battling poor UI design.

Even if someone says doom, especially given that cursna won't always succeed, it's good to know how much time is left so you can tell if you have enough time left to try to cure it. the disappearance of the visual indicator will also inform you more quickly than gluing your eyes to the constantly scrolling log, looking for the "soandso successfully removed soandso's doom" message," as we all know that the log window lags slightly behind what is happening.

[noodles355]

Chances are, if the healer misses "Monster uses Mortal Ray. Player2 is doomed.", they will also miss the icon replacing their linkshell changing too. Good healers know when players are doomed because they read the chatlog. Bad healers miss it, and would also miss this.

[Alhanelem]

I don't care if you're a good healer or a bad healer. It's useful to some, and harms no one. The only issue is dev time required and therefore likelyhood of implementation. Which is fair to say, but does not itself have any bearing on whether it's a good feature or not. In reality, i'd like visual ways of notifying of all kinds of debuffs, giving the player the choice of using the log or the game screen. But I started with the doom counter, because I think it might be easy to leverage an existing system (the on screen damage display).

[MSTRLied]

My two cents?... This system would't be to reliable due to the fact most people who are gonna be in range of doom will probably be armor changing blinking so the names as well as their icons would just disappear with them... by the time they reappear 2 seconds left...

(Although I do wonder why so many personal attacks... I think replacing the icon with a zz or a skull indicating a status effect would be nice, cute, and quirky. )

[Runespider]

Would be nice to have status ailment icons like this (maybe even just on the name/party bar) but it's quite a big addition given the current dev team situation. Like the idea but they are struggling to give us proper content to do let alone minor stuff like this.

[Bulrogg]

I'd like a /doom emote to convey my status aliment the same way I do when I'm /doze or /mute.

[Kensagaku]

My two cents on this...

I don't feel it's necessary, in all honesty. Don't get me wrong, I think it could have its benefits, but the problem is still a lack of attention. If you know a monster can cast a single-target doom, you're ready to cursna the hate target. If it's an AoE doom, you want to be ready to cursna bomb the tanks before the DDs (or the main DDs if they're the tanks, i.e. WAR etc). All melee fighting an AoE doom-using mob should have Holy Waters or be prepared to run in/out if they can't bother to take the time to prepare. And in the event that multiple people do end up getting cursed, a simple "doomed" should suffice.

Your biggest argument is that the chat log can get flooded in battle between people yelling doom and an alliance of people wailing on one mob. Two issues with this, in my opinion: 1) If you're fighting with an alliance and the majority of them get doomed without any way to remove it (holy waters or cursna if a mage happens to wander too close for god knows what reason) then that's just abysmal planning. 2) Chat filters. Why is the concept of chat filters so hard? People get doomed, they say doomed. Mages place priority order and remove curse as they can.

Even if a person's at 3 seconds it's worth giving it a shot as well, as I know I've been saved at 1-2 seconds more than once simply because I wasn't high on the priority list and had to get tossed a cursna later on. The mage order of operations in these situations is generally Cursna tanks > keep tank's HP up > Cursna others if tank is doing okay. Generally they'll try until a person hits the ground, and a simple typing of "doomed" or "doom" should suffice to say if you're still afflicted, with "clear" to state that they're good to go.

tl;dr - It'd be nice but it's not necessary by a long shot.

[Vyvian]

A good healer has to be observing the screen, whether they realize it or not. At a split second glance a person would recognize a doom symbol over a player much faster than it could be typed. Perhaps the healer already knew that doom was coming, but sometimes people screw up and don't stand where they are supposed to be standing and also got doomed. Usually you notice that too, but sometimes too much happens at once.

And lets face it, if your fighting a doom mob, the people tanking will have holy waters, but the guy thinking he's never pulling hate (like the THF or a RDM) never has them. Perhaps that's oversight on their part. If 3 people get doomed by apocalyptic ray because they all stood in a line because they failed to understand tauri mechanics, you'd see that onscreen faster than the chat log would load that it happened, and faster than all 3 people would type /p doom. In addition, you would see immediately on its removal as a visual indicator would dissapear. Cursna has an abysmal cast time and recast time, wasting casts because the person types that it came off too slow means you might not get to save a second person.

[Soranika]

A good healer has to be observing the screen, whether they realize it or not. At a split second glance a person would recognize a doom symbol over a player much faster than it could be typed. Perhaps the healer already knew that doom was coming, but sometimes people screw up and don't stand where they are supposed to be standing and also got doomed. Usually you notice that too, but sometimes too much happens at once.

And lets face it, if your fighting a doom mob, the people tanking will have holy waters, but the guy thinking he's never pulling hate (like the THF or a RDM) never has them. Perhaps that's oversight on their part. If 3 people get doomed by apocalyptic ray because they all stood in a line because they failed to understand tauri mechanics, you'd see that onscreen faster than the chat log would load that it happened, and faster than all 3 people would type /p doom. In addition, you would see immediately on its removal as a visual indicator would dissapear. Cursna has an abysmal cast time and recast time, wasting casts because the person types that it came off too slow means you might not get to save a second person.
-nod- Notice when I use cursna while subbing /whm. WHM/RDM on the other hand, plus fast cast gear, healing magic casting time reduction gear (mostly just Orison platoons +1/+2) and haste, cursna takes about 2 seconds to cast with 3-4 second recast time. WHM/SCH is slightly slower without the use of stratagems. I honestly wouldn't rely on any one other than WHM to reliably spam cursna to remove doom given the fact that healing magic effects success rate and even still there's only about at 25% chance at the most that it'll work.

It's worth noting though that with this doom argument of "3 seconds doom left" is actually more like 9 seconds. The count downs work like ticks with anything so you have anywhere from 20-30 seconds to be cured, not literally 5-10 seconds. So even if a WHM is unobservant of any visual cue, there is "time" to cast. And like Kansagaku stated, chat filters... Dunno why they seem so hard to be used.

[autobot]

i like the idea and i have always wanted to be able to see what buffs/debuffs a party member/alliance member has.

For people arguing about chat filters and being good at the job, that's just plain stupid. Just because a mob does a move doesn't mean the additional effect will stick. Ever had a spider do acid spray and not get poisoned? It doesn't say in the chat log whether or not you get poisoned it just displays the damage you have taken. The only way to know if that player was poisoned is to stare at the HP bar, and lets hope that player doesn't have regen on because then you need to do some quick math to tell if that person was poisoned. So while you are sitting there being a great whm, staring at the chat log and casting poisona to remove the poison your tank doesn't have, along comes a sickle slash and your tank is laying on the floor because you didn't cure your tank because you were casting an unnecessary spell. good job chat log.

here is another situation for you people who are trying to rely on chat filters.

You are fighting a doll, it does gravity field and now your whole party is slowed. in your party is you, the whm and a rdm. because you have chat filters on you can only see what the mob does to your party but not what your party is doing. so you cast erase (or haste) on party member 1, you cast on party member 2 and as you are casting on party member 2 the rdm is casting on party member 3. well since you cant see what spells are being cast and because you are focused on the chat log you missed the animation of the rdms spell so you then cast your spell on party member 3 only to see your spell has no effect. And as you were casting your spell party member 6 gets hit with blitzstrahl, is stunned and then killed because shadows were down and you were too busy to cure. then you blame the rdm for not curing, your party disbands, you get filled with rage, your wife comes in the room, you beat her mercilessly until you kill her, you go to jail and then you drop the soap in the shower only to become bubba's new love slave.

and you can then argue that the wrong chat filters were on and you should be able to see a party member casting, but then your chat filter is too cluttered with all the /nin's casting shadows and the rdm casting and you casting and the mob doing what it does and all the damage and blah blah blah.

Point is chat filters can help or hinder, and just because you focus at the chat log and HP bar doesn't mean you will see all the information happening to party members because its not all displayed.

I hope you shower alone in jail.

[Alhanelem]

For this one I would just point to FFXIV (And WoW, and DDO, and many other MMOs), which briefly shows the status icon and name of effect visually on the players/monsters when they happen. This way you can look at the graphics and get basically the same information as looking at the log. It's not inherently better or worse than using the chat log, but it is good for those who prefer looking at the graphics over the text.

Obviously that would be harder to implement in FFXI, though as I suggested, an existing system could be leveraged for that purpose. Visual indicators serve a simple purpose- it's just an alternative to the chat log. The reason I specifically went for the doom counter is because the game most likely doesn't show you the countdowns because it would spam the log too heavily. But using a visual indicator gets around this problem.

[Kensagaku]

Think your metaphor got a little out of hand, but it was amusing at least.

First off, with doom (which is what this topic is about!), I can't think of an instance where you don't either see "[Player Name] is doomed" or "Additional Effect: [Player Name] is doomed." (I can't even remember where I've seen En-doom but I'm pretty sure I have). So if you're watching the chatlog with proper filters, then you're fine in that regard.

Now using your own examples, and I'm afraid some of this is going to come off as "suck less", despite my well-meaning intentions. With almost any spider mob, its poison is usually not something to worry about. Generally I've seen Acid Spray be fairly low, to the point where it rarely affects the player much. And if you're getting taken out by Sickle Slash then your healers aren't doing their job properly; they should be topping you off before removing a fair number of status ailments, with exceptions being things like Doom, as there's no point in removing them from a person who's about to die and lose them anyway.

As for dolls, the same thing applies. If you're worried about casting erase while your tank is getting massacred, then you're not doing it right, for lack of a better phrase. Yes it helps a NIN tank for his shadows being recast, but at the same time if said NIN is stunned and dying now's not really the time to help him cast his shadows faster. Cures should take a higher priority than most status ailments, with the latter being removed as time and situation allows. Hence, you should watch the HP bar before taking stock of what status ailments are in effect.

Also, the whole wrong chat filters bit... even with people casting shadows and the other party members casting, it shouldn't clutter it much. You should still be able to see what happened to people. If not, a simple word from a melee (assuming they're not whiny and go PARA PARA PARA WHY ARE YOU PARALYNAING THE TANK FIRST) should indicate any you've missed. Or you can open the chatlog briefly to check, though that's conducive to getting distracted at a bad moment. Again, it's mostly that you need to pay attention if you're the healer.

Last, I disagree with showing all of the status ailments at once simply because that would horribly clutter the screen. Someone commented that "why do we play the game if we only look at the chatlog/hp bar" but my answer to that is why do we play if we only look at a screen full of status ailment symbols? However, an interesting alternative is to use the linkshell/bazaar icon, and have it cycle through all status ailments on a person so that you can see what effects are in place while preventing unnecessary clutter.

[Alhanelem]

I can't think of an instance where you don't either see "[Player Name] is doomed" or "Additional Effect: [Player Name] is doomed." That's not what I'm talking about.

Tahngarthor's doom counter is now down to 10.
Tahngarthor's doom counter is now down to 9.
Tahngarthor's doom counter is now down to 8....

This is only visible to you, not anyone else. Yes, if you have the appropriate filters off, you can see everyone's "Soandso is Doomed" message. But it's impossible to see how much time is left on the counter unless you yourself are doomed.

The reason this isn't displayed in the log is simple. If there is AoE doom, it would result in a massive flood of the chat log, as I exemplified earlier in the thread. Move the counter to a visual indicator and you get around the log flood problem.

[Kensagaku]

That's not what I'm talking about.

Tahngarthor's doom counter is now down to 10.
Tahngarthor's doom counter is now down to 9.
Tahngarthor's doom counter is now down to 8....

This is only visible to you, not anyone else. Yes, if you have the appropriate filters off, you can see everyone's "Soandso is Doomed" message. But it's impossible to see how much time is left on the counter unless you yourself are doomed.

The reason this isn't displayed in the log is simple. If there is AoE doom, it would result in a massive flood of the chat log, as I exemplified earlier in the thread. Move the counter to a visual indicator and you get around the log flood problem.

I... wasn't aware I was addressing you at this point. Forgive me for not understanding my own thought process and quoting you.

Edit: My bad, I didn't see you ninja'd a post above my last one so I missed yours. Sorry! Sarcasm revoked.

But to be fair, let me say this: what does it matter how much time you've got left? If a person's gonna Cursna you, you're either going to get it immediately until cured because you're a priority tank, or you're going to get it down the line if you're still alive and the more important people have received Cursna. All adding a visible timer is going to do is stress the healers because they're going to see "OH MY GOD EVERYONE'S GOING TO DIE IN 5 SECONDS I CAN'T GET THEM ALL." Having a visual indicator isn't going to have any real effect on the healing process except to create tension for the unfortunate mages.

[Alhanelem]

Actually it does have an effect on the process. It saves you from attempting to cast the spell if it would be a futile effort, allowing you to cast something else instead of wasting time casting the spell only to have it not go off.

If it does you good to know how long you have to live (it does), then it does other people good as well.

I would like visual indications of all status effects, personally. I simply started here because in this case the information is normally harder to come by.

[Kensagaku]

Many people don't know exactly how long it takes to cast Cursna. And with varying degrees of Fast Cast gear, you're going to see different cast times. Unless someone is showing a 1 for their Doom Countdown timer, I doubt that it'll stop people from trying to cast a Cursna. I can sort of see your point, but at the same time, it's important to focus on the tanks and such, and deal with the extra DD as you can. Cure them first, cursna them first, etc.

[Soranika]

I've said all I could without repeating myself... I just really wonder if you're actually looking at this from perspective of being a competent WHM or healer in general and taken in account visual limitations of hardware (no, not lolps2limitations but how clear additional visual data would be at any given distance.)

[autobot]

While i understand that this thread is about the discussion of Doom, and as was said being able to see other debuffs on a party member, such as the green tint that was posted in an earlier post, this is still applied to doom. No matter the debuff being able to see it along within chat is a good thing.

My post was just examples of how things can get missed or aren't seen due to too much going on or not enough information being displayed. And everyone in the game has experienced those "oh snap" moments where someone in the party goes from full hp to dead. Whether it be a nuke, a high damage move like sickle slash, or death scissors it happens. Anyone that has leveled the old school way has had their tank hit by one of those moves. And it doesn't matter how good the whm is, if a high damage move happens and a cure doesn't go off before the mobs next attack round, they die. Point being mobs can spam moves, if you are wasting time casting an unnecessary spell that can cause players to die.

And regardless how competent one might be there are variables that would cause a person to miss something being displayed in the chat log. people could be fighting multiple mobs, for example, being one of the 2 whms in an exp party in abyssea-altepa. You cant tell me even with chat filters you can cure, remove debuffs, etc to 16 other people without missing something. And yes cure should be priority over anything else but you can sneeze and miss something that happens. what then? With no visual indicator how would u know unless you wasted time going back through the chat log and then u miss more.

its a good idea period, i don't know why everyone has to complain about something that will benefit them.

[Kensagaku]

I didn't say it was a bad idea to display status effects, but the means by which you suggest it could create lag and such when you're adding what I assume is another layer to the player model. Green tint for poison, Zzz above head for sleep, all of those could create extra animations that could possibly create lag. I say possibly because I'm not a programmer myself and cannot be sure. This is why I said perhaps replace the LS symbol (or perhaps put a symbol after the name) to show the status effects that are currently in effect, cycling between them so that you can check at a glance and see what people are stuck with.

[autobot]

My comments weren't directed towards you Kensagaku, just a general statement to those who are hating on the idea and those who are judging others ability to play perfectly.

As someone mentioned before an icon could be placed by the players name/hp bar.

Or if a constant display of all party members ailments would be too much perhaps when you target a party member their ailments are displayed.

Or perhaps a command could be created such as \status <t> would display in the chat log what ailments are currently on that target. this could be used for party member, alliance members, players outside the party and even mobs so you know what enfeebles have worn off or haven't been applied yet. True this wouldn't help a situation such as doom where you are limited on time to remove that ailment, but then you could have a graphical for such things as doom where their ailments are more serious than the others and still have a way to see other ailments on a player.

Also it would be nice if the chat log would display when an additional effect lands on a mob for such things like delta thrust.

[Soranika]

No, it's not that the ideal is hated. It's a redundant suggestion that is, probably unintended, to be a scapegoat to cover being incompetent as a healer and possibly ill suited tactics dealing with dangerous mobs that can cause doom that does cause to be a distraction and overwhelm the healer(s).

I'm speaking purely from experience. I'm an xbox 360 user so already my reflexes are handicapped, but there's never been an issue between where it was "too late" to heal some one of any status ailment and keep them cured... unless people are wailing on the mob with reckless abandon with no concept of what TP feed means. For some mobs, TP feed DOES matter and in most cases it is the ones that DO cause doom and have very dangerous TP moves, like tauras family mobs.

[Alhanelem]

This suggestion has absolutely zero to do with healer competency. None. This is more about making information visible in other ways so that players have a choice as far as where on the screen they want to look to get information. Anything that requires the player to take their fingers off a trigger finger to type a message asking someone to do something that they honestly should be able to glean from the UI or looking at the player/monster/action and then dying because you were typing instead of doing something is not designed well and should not be a skill required of players, especially in a game like this where you may be unable to directly communicate with other players in some circumstances (e.g. jp/en language barrier)

It's particularly hard to blame healers for dying to doom when they can't remove it 100% of the time.

You say a player is unskilled for not saying "I'm doomed!." I say that telling other people something that the game could tell you instead is not something that should be considered a skill. I watch for statuses and cure them, I tell people I have status effects. But most games give you this information so you can spend less time typing and more time controlling your character. I don't see anything wrong with that.